


Gods and Fighting Men

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, all aboard the pain train, potential ending if the writers cared about cisco enough, though not as bad as it might have been, which they don't so i did it for them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 03:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8649979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: STAR Labs is in ruins, and Cisco Ramon is the last one standing against the self-titled God of Speed.We could be gods, Reverb once promised him. It's time to see if that is true.





	

It’s almost strange, Cisco thinks, to see STAR Labs like this. The Particle Accelerator did not bring the building down like a house of cards, the Singularity did not pull it to pieces entirely, even Zoom and his army never shattered it, the last unbroken thing. It feels like an impossibility to see it all lain out, so much rubble, just plaster and drywall, rebar and concrete, jagged metal and so much glass.

When it was under attack, facing destruction before, Cisco always had that lingering thought under the fear for his own safety, for his friends, that this building was his life’s work. Everything he’d built since he was twenty, everything he’d worked so hard to create. From ashes and pain, he had made something of it, and now there was so little left.

But not nothing. If the last three years had taught him anything—if the last three _months_ had taught him anything, it was that there was always something left. Not untouched or unscathed, because how could anything be whole in the ending of the world, but still there. He can feel his own heart beating. He stands, achingly slow, one gloved hand brushing grit and glass from his vest, and searches. There is a smudge of crimson, Barry, several yards away, unmoving, but Cisco can hear that heartbeat, too. Slower than it should be, but that isn’t the problem right now.

Savitar doesn’t seem dwarfed by the skeletal remains of the lab, the chunks that were ceiling and wall mere pillars now. Instead they almost seem to draw attention to him, gleaming with Chrome and bright blue light, the manifestation of the god he always claimed to be. Cisco can’t breathe, and it has nothing to do with the pain in his ribs from almost being crushed, or the way dust hangs in the air like mist. Barry never could match Savitar when he was in good condition, one more impossible thing to think he could now. Wally is trapped. And Caitlin—Cisco still remembers the way her stumbling whisper revealed what Alchemy’s minion had told her, the way she’d closed her eyes as if that alone could blot the memory. How he had glorious plans. At the time, Cisco had spared a thought to wonder if they were the same plans Eobard Thawne had had for him. Now, seeing Caitlin amid the mangled furniture and destroyed computers, he does not.

Savitar had taken lives, he had taken hope and confidence, people’s agency, bent to his will. Savitar had taken STAR Labs itself from them. He could not have Caitlin, too. He could not have this last, final victory. Not as long as there was something left. Not if that something was Cisco. He flexes one hand, then the other, feeling the torn gloves scrape against the callused skin of his palms, pulls in a breath, the cold air like a blade in his lungs.

Savitar notices him, and Cisco wonders if this is how bugs feel before the shoe comes down, but he fights down that feeling of insignificance. Savitar may think the only thing that could threaten him is speed, but Savitar is wrong.

“You think to fight a god?” the voice that has haunted Wally’s dreams and Cisco’s vibes jeers. “Your pathetic excuse for a speedster is finished.”

Cisco remembers a moment from a lifetime ago, something distant and buried, something he had shoved down. He can hear Reverb’s speech in his ears, can feel the shape of the words on his tongue just as he can feel the gravel under his feet. _You could be a god._ We _could be gods._ He was not tempted then, not by delusions of grandeur, of ruling. But he can feel the universe pulsing with his heartbeat, too steady and calm for this. For what it all faces.

He raises a palm, and his arm does not shake.

Savitar laughs, and the sound is like lightning down Cisco’s spine, a crackling in his ears. Part of him wants to run. Reverb could not even face Zoom, that demon thing that pales in comparison to this being. But instead he swallows. He is not Reverb.

“This ends,” he says, because his mouth is too dry for speeches and his mind too blank for some quippy one liner. As last words go, it’s pathetic, but if they are his last words, there will be no one to remember them, anyway. Shoulders back, he sets a stance, the way Laurel once taught him.

“Does it?” Savitar is on him long before he can blink, and then back again, a few feet back. Cisco goes down, white-hot flame tearing at his side. His arm drops, his whole body blurred with pain. _No, no, no._ “Did you really think you could even hope to face me?” Savitar asks, a tilt to his head, a cat watching a mouse bleed out, the faint fluttering of a downed bird. _“_ You are nothing. I am the God of speed.”

Cisco can almost feel the shredding of his own heart, just looking at Savitar, he can hear the Speedforce’s familiar notes, the way it echoes, pulses, hums, bleeding into the surrounding air. Everything is so still and quiet, even the sound of sirens seem a muted, distant thing. Savitar takes his time standing over Cisco, human seconds. Cisco does not bother covering his heart with a hand in feeble protection. Instead he rolls, stretches it out, one last gesture.

“No,” he says, because he doesn’t have the breath to say _, no, not nothing, Vibe._ He doesn’t have the time to say that Savitar is as much a god as Reverb was, little ‘g’ god, and not invincible, not immortal, not impossible. He doesn’t have the energy to scream at him to leave his shattered, broken family alone.

The ‘no’ is quiet. The pulse that shreds his gloves to ribbons is not. Savitar slams back into what once was the elevator shaft and seems stunned by the blow, this first anyone has managed to land.

Cisco drags himself upwards, and closes his eyes, but not in defeat. His bones and blood pound with the vibrations that press around him, and he reaches, bleeding palm and fingers grasping for that one strand that never seems to dull or fade away, never peters out like all the rest do, ripples in a pond. Movement. He strains and catches hold of it. There are only two options here: he will open his eyes and see Savitar, or he will not open them again. Somehow this binary is a comfort. He takes hold of that thread, that pulsing note of music no one was really ever meant to hear, like wrapping guitar string around his fingers, cutting, numbing.

His eyes open, his lungs explode with breath, and he pulls. The wire, the string, the living energy does not snap, but seems to follow the line, pooling around him, under his skin. Savitar, he of the gleaming light and glittering metal, does not dissolve like Eobard Thawne did, does not scream the way Zoom did, carried away. The power keeps coming, and Cisco can see it, swirling and nebulous. It feels like thread but it reaches so far beyond, blocking out the sky, the rubble, Barry and Caitlin’s too still but alive forms. All that exists now is Savitar, and Cisco, and the Speedforce.

There should be no end to this, like infinite molten metal through a drawplate, but after what might have been years or might have been seconds, it does. The light all dies away, the pre-dawn glow at once brighter and dimmer than the lightning storm that was the Speedforce. Cisco realizes his knees have long since given up on him, that again he is on the ground, surrounded by a world in ashes. Something silver catches at his eyes, but he is so weary.

There is no more Savitar, just a puddle of chrome, half solidified, the last flicker of some unearthly light fading out. Air returns to his lungs, stings on a palm that no longer bleeds. He stands again, a bubble popped around him. The sirens are closer now. The heartbeats of his team are firmer.

 _Gloria al Padre, al Hijo y al Espíritu Santo,_ his voice is too weak to say aloud. _You could be a god,_ Reverb had offered. _I am a god_ , Savitar had boasted. Cisco sways. That power had not saved either of them. His own had stopped Savitar, had saved the others, but he is no god. He does not want to be, not in the way they had yearned for, killed for. He feels a hand on his shoulder, and another mirroring it. No one speaks. No one needs to, as the three of them steady each other.

STAR Labs is in ruins, but not all is broken beyond rebuilding.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make the world go round


End file.
